This might also be a good time to talk about Centenntable vs. #1000ButtonProject. A little while back, while working on a few separate projects I realized that submitting the #1000ButtonProject to events might be complicated by the fact that everyone’s first question is “Wait aren’t there only 100 buttons.” It immediately became obvious that people would think that the project was unfinished rather than in a rolling state of development.

Hence, Centenntable. I’ve submitted to a few events under this name, and shown the project with those things in mind depending on the aim for each event. For Indie Arcade, in Madison, it made sense to go with the Centenntable moniker. Basically Centenntable is when the project is only 1 board.

]]>#1000ButtonProject at MAGFest 2018http://buttonsare.cool/2018/01/15/1000buttonproject-at-magfest-2018/
Mon, 15 Jan 2018 05:51:38 +0000http://buttonsare.cool/?p=5022I was pleased to be a part of this years MAGFest event, the longest I’ve attended a convention with the board in tow.

Quick summation full of exciting talking points, go!

The Drive

It is approximately an eleven hour drive from Central KY all the way to National Harbor.

It is longer when you’re traveling in a van with 8 people.

Somewhere in West Virginia there is a place called Biscuit World and the biscuits are great

We were in West Virginia for forever

The Set-Up

We made some minor alterations to the code for the board the day before going to the event, which is always terrifying to me and involved doing some live updating on the floor as we were setting up.

They put the #1000ButtonProject with the indie arcade cabinets.

Since I wasn’t with either of the two collectives – Babycastles or Death by Audio Arcade, I ended up somewhere in the middle of the two, with my two near dead poofs and a projector on a TV table so it would get high enough to be seen.

The dudes in Death By Audio Arcade were super nice during set-up. They seem like rad people.

Final set-up looked like this, with me between the arcade cabinet for Foiled & the set-up for Salmon Roll on one side, and a large tent covered in green fabric that represented Squishy the Turtle.

Here’s a short video I made for social media that just shows a bunch of people slamming away to their hearts content.

I met with some awesome people, some of whom invited me and the board to shows! So that’s rad.

Downside: On the morning of the final day I came to the booth and saw that the game was down for the first time all weekend. Checking it turned out that someone had knocked the projector off of the TV table. While there was a note that reassured that the person who had knocked it off had been sober (um, cool I guess?) further investigation revealed that the bulb was pretty shattered and that there was more damage. I’m waiting to hear more from the folks at MAGFest about compensation to cover the destroyed projector since….well it’s not actually mine?

On a more personal, less off the cuff note: this is an event where I became overly aware that I was the only femme person traveling in my group, and that the arcade crowd was markedly male. There were a couple of developers in the Babycastles area, but I was so wired to the board that it was hard for me to leave it to say hi to anyone. It’s weirdly isolating being the only person like you at an event, like you have to represent everyone and that you’re somehow responsible for their feelings about your gender or identity.

But enough of that! I also got to meet a very cool dude named Woolie Woolz, who was a podcaster and YouTuber with Super Best Friends and was a very supportive and cool dude (I guess that’s repetitive). They talked about the board on their very good podcast, which you can listen to here.

There’s also a full video of the shenanigans we got up to en route to DC, in DC and on the way back. Or basically a full accounting, since I barely even touch on the giant wizard dance party with music provided by the boards own 2 Mello.

Til next time, dear board mates, we’ll see you among the stars. Or something. Do blog posts need sign offs?

]]>#1000ButtonProject on the Louisville Newshttp://buttonsare.cool/2017/12/30/1000buttonproject-on-the-louisville-news/
Sat, 30 Dec 2017 06:21:51 +0000http://buttonsare.cool/?p=5026Check out this interesting video from WHAS 11 in Louisville, which covered the Kentucky Fried Pixels launch party.
]]>Kentucky Fried Pixels Launch Partyhttp://buttonsare.cool/2017/09/07/kentucky-fried-pixels-launch-party/
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 03:20:12 +0000http://buttonsare.cool/?p=5011This past Friday I had the opportunity to be a part of the launch party for the second Kentucky Fried Pixels bundle. A collaborative bundle of locally made games, everyone else at the event was a developer as a part of the bundle or at least a local developer.

While it was very rainy, it was a lot of fun to see people come out and try the board before I take it in to check all the wiring (it’s had a busy 2 months).

There’s quite a few pictures from Kathryn for Louisville Makes Games, which you can check out on Flickr (and really if you’re interested in solid games event photography, these are freaking stellar). I’ve included four of my favorites here.

Where will the board be next? I have literally no idea. Hit me up on Twitter at @barelyconcealed if you’re just dying to see the button board at your event.

Anyone who’s talked to me for any length on this project knows that I’m way more passionate about making the buttons than I am making games for the boards. I’m hard wired right now to drill holes in boards and drop buttons in them, that’s basically all I’m interested in right now.

So to keep things chug chug chugging along, we’re running a month long game jam starting September 8th! A whole month! Of game jam goodness. Where people will make games for the board and we’ll live stream playtesting them.

Basically this week I’m going to open up the code that connects the board to Unity, allowing people to make games for the button board. Have an interesting idea? Show me what you got. Seriously, I am incredibly interested in seeing what people make for 100 unique buttons, and am happy to answer any questions you may have.

]]>Bit Bash 2017http://buttonsare.cool/2017/08/15/bit-bash-2017/
Tue, 15 Aug 2017 03:55:00 +0000http://buttonsare.cool/?p=4998[View the story “#1000ButtonProject at Bit Bash” on Storify]
]]>Prototype Marissahttp://buttonsare.cool/2017/08/07/prototype-marissa/
Mon, 07 Aug 2017 05:19:15 +0000http://buttonsare.cool/?p=4986I knew after Jeremiah that I would need to have a lot more space for buttons, and a lot more buttons. Through several donations, including 11 pre-owned buttons from a friend out of Michigan and several incredibly generous donations to my PayPal, I was able to afford the first 100 buttons. I decided to leave Jeremiah in one piece (for now) just in case I needed a 16 button controller.

100 buttons seemed like the smartest way to go after the first 16. For starters, 100 buttons is a nice 10th of what I am looking for for my final goal, which is 1000 buttons. Additionally, 100 buttons has a nice descriptive voice to it. It’s easy to describe. It sounds like a lot (because it is) but actually isn’t a lot (it really is).

With this in mind, I first checked Amazon for a table of a decent size and table thickness. Ideally I wanted a panel that would sit up a bit like a drafters table. Amazon and IKEA gave me some great options all of which are expensive so I went to Goodwill instead. At Goodwill I found a really interesting short IKEA table with two wooden, red topped stools. It’s actually a discontinued children’s table called Sansad and has adjustable little legs to allow it to change height.

I kind of wanted an IKEA table, because I’m kind of fond of most of the products I’ve purchased through IKEA for their general durability and also because I like the fact that the tables and other products are actually pretty easy to break down and flat pack. Case in point, breaking down this table took the removal of about 10 long screws that connect the base to the tabletop. That’s it. and the base remained in one piece, so I could rest it off to the side while I fussed around with the table.

Gingy also named this one, going with Marissa. So this board is Prototype Marissa.

Many of the buttons from this version were purchased using donations from the PayPal link. They are all standard classic American arcade buttons. Originally I was going to do this version with a 100 pack of buttons purchased from AliExpress, all in pink, but some complications arose that I will cover later.

First step (after removing the legs from the tabletop) was to lay out the pattern of buttons on the bottom of the table. Using the table legs as a guide to avoid punching holes through where support would someday be, I sketched out a grid.

This process is lengthy but mostly involves trying to line everything up as well as can be expected without getting the buttons too close together. There are 100 buttons, so it takes some time. Anything that is tedious gets way more so when you do it 100 times.

Next step is drilling holes.

Days. This process takes days. At one point I switched to a tougher bit, but even keeping that in mind, a drill that shuts off every 30 minutes and needs to be recharged for 2 hours.

What I’m saying is that it’s tedious. Also in this process some of the holes got roughed up on the white surface. My original intention was to pair up the clean white IKEA tabletop with the bright pink buttons. But after playing around with the drill it became obvious that the white was going to be too scuffed up by the drilling process to work on its own.

The grid was laid out in 7 x 14 with an additional 2 buttons to the side to allow players to select 2 players versus 1. Space would not permit a 10 x 10 grid unfortunately.

However, while playing with the blank board and some sharpies I found that I really liked this kind of weird doodle art. Pulling some references from Sharpie art cars and other forms of art, like the game Hidden Folks, I played around with drawing all over the board. I went ahead and purchased a bunch more sharpies so that I could make it happen.

What you end up with at the end of the drawing is something that looks a bit like a hodgepodge of a few different art styles.

Since this started off as kind of a lark, I didn’t really prepare the board. This doesn’t end up being a very long term strategy for covering a board since it basically wipes off with a touch.

I hit the board a few times with clear, matte spraypaint. After those layers of spray paint, the surface still felt easy to dust off and I accidentally scratched it against another surface, taking off all those layers of clear coat.

After that I tried two coats of paint on polyurethane. This was easily brushed on and seemed to hold the surface a bit better, but still seemed like not a strong enough coat. After getting into Rules and Play I realized that I was going to need a bit more to be comfortable. Rules and Play is held at the Living Arts and Science Center, which is a childrens museum and has regular access to younger folks.

After talking with a friend, I went out and purchased some bar top epoxy. I had to wait a week and a half to get access to a space where I could apply thick epoxy without risking asphyxiation. These are the hazards are working out of apartment with no woodworking space.

Since I had already carved the table up with the button holes I needed a solution for not filling out the holes with epoxy. Another friend suggested filling the holes with candles, which I could then easily melt out after the epoxy had dried. This seemed like a good plan so I spent a long weekend carving candles down to fit relatively tight into the holes.

After this, I moved the board into a friends garage and applied masking tape to the edges of the board to help make sure that the edges didn’t run off the side.

The room where I applied the epoxy was very very warm. Probably in the mid to high 90’s, which I found out afterwards is probably not a great thing for epoxy. After applying one coat, the bar top reacted to the polyeruthane and turned a dark yellow. It was very difficult to get completely even, so I applied a second coat of epoxy to try and fill out the spots.

After a week of applying an epoxy coat, I went ahead and started work on removing the candles. As much fun as it seemed to be to melt out the candles, it turns out that epoxy also burns so I did not want to do that.

I did, however, want to light 100 candles on fire because it sounded like it would look pretty cool.

After this, I spent a few days carving out the rest of the wax from the button holes mostly with a Phillips head screwdriver and an old pair of scissors. Lesson learned, do not use wax. Probably should’ve just used masking tape, but you live and learn.

Some of the button holes were a touch too narrow for most of the buttons, with the epoxy falling into the button holes and creating a base (on the underside of the table where it leaked out) and narrowing some of the holes. This mostly meant using my stash of LED buttons which had narrower stalks than the regular variety.

This is also the step where I realized that with the addition of the epoxy, the pink was now too short to use in the project. The yellow also gave it a really garish overall look in combination with the pink, so I decided to use the stash of colored buttons that I had acquired throughout the project.

Here is what the button board looks like with 100 multi-colored buttons laid out at random.

This started the final and most difficult part of the process, wiring the entire board. This turned into an ordeal because there are 100 buttons.

100 buttons.

Each button has to have 2 lines drawn from it, one for ground and one to the Arduino. In this case, the board used was actually an Elgoo Mega 2560 (2 of them) and about halfway through the initial wiring I realized that I needed to daisy chain the wires from the ground because otherwise there would be a mess of wires. Final wiring ended up looking a bit messy due to prototyping and having to pull wires when they didn’t match up.

Lessons learned: probably don’t drill 100 holes by hand. If you apply epoxy do it before the holes are drilled. Things like that. You can follow the adventures of this board, and by proxy, the whole 1000 button project on Twitter.

]]>Prototype Jeremiahhttp://buttonsare.cool/2017/05/09/prototype-jeremiah/
Tue, 09 May 2017 23:06:14 +0000http://buttonsare.cool/?p=4974I’ve been having this idea for awhile. A thousand button arcade fight stick, 500 buttons a player that would sort of even the playing field for fighting games and bring back that childlike sensation of button mashing against someone way, way better than you.

Finally I started procuring buttons, mostly through Amazon, and decided to start with a 16 button fight stick. DJ Tech Tools already manufactures what they call a 3D Midi Fighter, and at 16 possible buttons it is one of the larger controllers on the market. 16 seemed like a good start. So I went to the local Peddler’s Mall to try and find a box.

As someone who lives in a semi-urban apartment without regular access to a woodshop, it was kind of important to me to not have to actually build the tabletop. At some point I would like to design a tabletop that allows for folding legs and a safe space for the stalk of the buttons, but with my current set up that’s not really doable.

For starters, it made sense to have a box that opened up but was mostly still closed (so that the electronics could go inside) and that was a solid wood so that it would stand up to being perforated by 16 holes.

Gingy, the friend who went with me to the Peddler’s Mall, named the box Jeremiah. It seemed to make sense, this big thick wooden box that someone had made (probably as a toy chest).

With the buttons already purchased, I decided to lay them out on the back of the board so I would have some sort of idea of what they would look like. I gave them a decent amount of space, because I was concerned about the amount of pressure that drilling would cause and this was my first time. I gave extra leeway around the lip of the box, so that the box would still be able to swing open and shut.

I used an old architectural ruler and silver sharpie in an attempt to clearly draw out lines and shapes. I would find after I had drilled a few holes that I had given them way way too much space.

I tested the drill bit in much cheaper scrap wood I had laying around because this wooden top is effectively one of a kind.

Harbor Freight makes positively terrible drill bits. Like seriously this drill bit lasted maybe 1 hole and then I went and purchased two more drill bits from Home Depot, both of which are still kicking 115 holes later.

Drilling time was further added to because the drill’s battery lasted approximately 30 minutes of consistent drilling and I didn’t want to drill at night because I live in an apartment and am drilling on what amounts to be a shared back porch. For this project I’m using hole saw bits, which are basically tunnels lined with sharp teeth and affixed to a central bit. I attempted to line these central bits to the marked holes on the board with alright results. It turned out to be much more effective to mark the holes based on the hole saw rather than the central point.

So as you’ve probably gathered from these multiple days of drilling, these holes are way too far apart and frankly the holes are a little too large for the buttons. For future projects, I should downsize the actual size of the hole saw bit because it cuts a touch wider than the actual bit.

Wiring was fairly straight forward. With only 16 buttons, I decided to wire individually for ground rather than daisy chaining for ground because this is the first project I’ve done involving that much ground and I wasn’t honestly sure if it needed to be separate and didn’t want to risk it. Better to be safe and use all of your wire than to be sorry.

It was incredibly messy. I hooked up the wires to the ground and to the buttons in general using a pack of bright blue wire disconnector female ends. These slipped over the metal ends on the back end of the buttons. Sorry for not using incredibly technical terms, I honestly do not know them.

I hooked ground to a breadboard and used an A-PAC to wire the 16 buttons, since we had one of those laying around.

After this point, I reconnected the board to the box and turned it over for testing. This did involve drilling another hole to allow a USB cable to run from the A-Pac to an exterior computer. As would end up being standard for these projects, it became quickly obvious that the A-Pac was not terribly interested in resting on the upside down surface no matter what adhesive I used.

From this project the big takeaways were that I needed to think about wire management earlier than when I did so and I needed to space my buttons far closer together to achieve that wonderful hand feel I was looking for.